Elbow Grease

I'm not a handy man. I try, but to be bluntly honest... I'm useless, light globes I can do, mow the lawn... OK, cut stuff up.. OK, but anything useful, work on the car, fixing broken things in general.. no way! Much to the distress of my wife and probably embarrassment of my Dad, who is the most MacGyver type guy I know.

However I was partaking in some blokey (for those in the US, read REAL MANLY) outdoor activity, had the women folk inside tending to the young 'uns. OK I was outside breaking up branches to fit in the bin, whilst the rest of the family were warm and toasty inside. Doing this type of work is great to reaffirm your manhood, breaking stuff for good instead of evil and a great display of man's (limited) dominance over nature, it is however, also meditative. Gets your head going.

I'm not sure why, but a term my Mum used a lot when I was little came to mind. "Elbow Grease" A strange term sure, and I'm not sure where it came from (I can't be bothered looking up our friend Google), but I sure know what it means. The Definition according to me is this in relation to scrubbing "Hard work, intense pressure"
Sure we have tools to do anything, those great things with the power, noise and grunt that get me excited just thinking of them. It can do so much, so quickly, and is much more fun than doing things manually, or they way my parents or grandparents did it.

Hmmmmm sounds like Social Media for Recruiting doesn't it? You can use your Twitter, your Facebook, your LinkedIn (and all the periphery tools that go with them) etc, but you know what? You still have to do the business. You still need the old elbow grease, to plough through the names, to make the calls, yes to even write the emails, and then fair people, guess what? You actually have to converse, talk, build a relationship with people, the power tools won't do that for you. It's a shame really, wouldn't life be grand if it did? Imagine that techo's, make a tool, where all I need to do to hire someone was use that particular tool and I'd hire someone. One click : One hire. ahhh I smile at the thought of it. But what fun would that be?

The most challenging part of our industry is the people side, no tool can make you better at that.

Social Media is the hype. It's what drives recruiting and building the brand. However, using Social Media to do ALL of your recuiting is not wise. But, i think its going to help people find jobs as time moves on.